6.8 Exercises

Ethical Dilemma

James is about to conduct a performance appraisal for Maria. Maria has exhibited some performance problems in the past 6 months. She has been coming in late and leaving early, and she missed two important deadlines. At the same time, she is a very likeable and nice person who gets along well with others in the office. James also knows that Maria has a significant amount of debt and getting a bonus after this appraisal would really help her. James does not want to jeopardize his relationship with her and he does not want to prevent her from getting the bonus. Therefore, he is considering giving her a “good” rating in the appraisal. What would be your advice to James regarding this situation?

Individual Exercise

• A call center is using the metric of average time per call when rewarding employees. In order to keep their average time low, employees are hanging up on customers when they think that the call will take too long to answer.
• In a department store, salespeople are rewarded based on their sales volume. The problem is that they are giving substantial discounts and pressuring customers to make unnecessary purchases.
• All employees at a factory are receiving a large bonus if there are no reported injuries for 6 months. As a result, some employees are hiding their injuries so that they do not cause others to lose their bonus.

What are the reasons for the negative consequences of these bonus schemes? Modify these schemes to solve the problems.